Monster

Yesterday on channel 101 I watched a special by Vanguard (Lisa Lings company) on the severe pill trafficking problem in Broward county(Florida). They have it set up so essentially people can with flimsy medical paper, an MRI purchase enormous amounts of pharmaceuticals, sometimes called hilly billy heroin; the Oxys and the Zanax bars etc...Stuff that is lethal and highly addictive. Now what is fascinating is three fold. We have a huge pill popping drug problem bigger then any other drugs combined including Methamphetamine. I personally have witnessed the slow creepy walk of the drugged up in Florida by watching both young and old patrons in a cafe walk to their tables. Everyone I watched was on something, I could tell by their gait, the wobbly way they moved. Is everyone down in Florida a drug addict? It's a good way to retire I suppose. Okay maybe not everyone certainly but I bet its incredibly high the statistic. Now the next sad thing I watched on this particular show was deeply disturbing. They had a fellow who had lost his wife and younger brother to over doses. Oh and by the way in Florida the statistic is horribly high something like 11 people a month croak from a lethal combo of these drugs. This chap was committed still to his lifestyle of melting pills in foil and smoking the chemical. AFTER all that he has lost. he did share a very insightful thing he said for him there is no high anymore. It's getting normal. He has to use to feel NORMAL. Now Anna Nicole and MJ and Heath were all using pills with disastrous results . Listening to the mother of this man who care takes him knowing in her heart he will most probably not make it himself was crushing. I wanted to help her some how. I wanted to say something, do something, to give her relief. It is witnessing a slow death for her, watching this man, her son, smoke himself to death. Still with all of this sadness and grief and profit essentially pill abuse is legal in Florida essentially. People from neighboring states are taking full advantage and making money. What is illegal is the sale and distribution after the fact. With the right papers you can buy the pills initially but you can't turn around and sell them again. With all of this we become monsters. The addict has become a monster, he has changed his physical chemistry to now depend on opiates to function. You almost cannot call him human,he is another beast, a monster addicted to chemicals that seem to rob his normal human functions. This face of addiction is scary and I understand the fear of it and the need to control people and places and things from this zombiehood. YET...if we decriminalized and taxed drugs and allowed more research and took the criminal stigma off all of it, would we be in a better position to wrangle our lost loved ones back? In other words prisons don't seem to to deter the addicted and poor. It is a crisis of magnificent proportions. Broward county Florida can't help it, it needed this income obviously, so why not find a loop hole and legally cater to the population who is addicted to these pills? I remember when employment and money, tax money was scarce in Broward county. It may be horrible but the industry of pill pushing has put money back into the local coffers.

It's hypocritical to legalize some drugs and yet stigmatize others. Yet addiction is deeply troubling and powerful and I am wondering if stigmatizing addicts and putting them in prison is helping us understand the beast?

I think not.

I want to help the mother who is watching her children die one by one...I want to ease her sadness and I am not convinced that laws against these behaviors are the answer. They just don't work.

I do believe we need better research and more money to understand and study addiction and to open up the spiritual element the question of longing and the need for bliss relief.

Lets face it when we first take drugs or become "high" it's akin to a spiritual experience and that is the seed, the core thing we chase...continuously.

THAT moment or RUSH.

Making it bad and hiding from it in fear does make it go away it only makes it harder to find or understand.

We all want a slice of Nirvana...that in and of itself is not bad.

It's how we go about getting it "bliss" that is suspect and harmful sometimes.